An every day struggle with the ups and downs of Type 1 diabetes

I have a brittle type of diabetes where my BGL readings can one minute read 33.6 or Hi and then the next they will read either 1.8 or Lo. This is impacting on my life because it prevents me from even going out with mates and restricts me to just going to work and back home again.

Yes in the first two years I was in denial because I was 19 at the time I was first diagnosed. I just thought all the time why me and why couldn’t this have happened to another person? I was in the dark as to how to deal with this and still was until I came across this helpful ad on Facebook and decided to have a look and see what this was all about. I’m glad I did because now I know that I’m not the only one who is having the same or similar problems as this.

Anyway I was in and out of hospital up to 15 times per year with either very bad DKA or really bad lows that I couldn’t deal with at home because I didn’t know how to. When I was first diagnosed with Diabetes I spent six months in a diabetic coma. I wasn’t a well young man and my first BSL reading at the hospital was Hi. From what I was told it took them six months to get my BSL’s back to 4.8 to 8.3. Yes this should have taught me a valuable lesson but the thing is I wasn’t given any education about how to deal with the Hypers and Hypos. I was having a terrible time for the first few years. I was down in the dumps all the time I even was isolating myself in my bedroom all the time. I didn’t know who to call for help and most of the time when I called the ambulance to get me to the hospital because I was in DKA the paramedics just thought I was drunk and so they didn’t always take me to the hospital. It wasn’t until I was in and out of consciousness that they would take me seriously most of the time. Then in 2005 when my mother passed away I thought about killing myself because I thought everyone hated me.

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